


the heart in all its shades

by LilyGilt (Yirry)



Category: Strange the Dreamer Series - Laini Taylor
Genre: F/M, Mind Control, Mind Games, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-30 21:50:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19412089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yirry/pseuds/LilyGilt
Summary: AKA: five times Eril-Fane wanted to, and also five times he really, really didn't.[for the curious: a goddess who can control emotions plays with those of an unwilling victim.]





	the heart in all its shades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fairleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/gifts).



One time she said to Letha, "I'm tired of him. You can have him for a while, if you want." They were eating, the three goddesses, together at the table, and he was serving them. From Isagol's casual tone, Eril-Fane might as well not have been there. She spoke that way precisely because he was.

In the middle of the disgust he felt, there was a spark of anger that he, and all her other playthings, were so interchangeable. He despised her for feeling nothing for him that was unique to him.

She smiled, and looked up at him, and he felt that anger swell. Felt other things swell, too. Letha made an idle murmur and looked away, as bored with Isagol's game as Isagol had pretended to be, and Eril-Fane plucked his mistress out of her chair and carried her to her chamber.

He knew that not all of the lust was his. But that spark of pique had been his, before it flamed. Probably.

He made love to her with ardent force, as if he did have something to prove to her. As though her gasps of pleasure, her whole body rippling around his straining cock, his seed spilling into her and slick on her thighs, meant something.

When she let the impulse die, it did not go out like a spark, but reminded him more of some sweet confection, blown up into a bubble of sugar, then pushed past what it could sustain, bursting across him in a sticky, tangled mess. But edible, still. You could eat shame.

*

One time he woke. In both ways: from sleep and from her spell. He felt guilty, and soiled, and furious, and resolute.

She'd been in the city, carousing with Skathis, and he wondered: was it absence that had loosened her hold on his mind?

She was smiling and dreamy when she summoned him. Her presence inspired no affection. Her actions were complacent and tender. She kissed him languidly, leaning into him as though basking in his strength. Hope and disgust leapt in him: he thought his feelings were his own, and she must not know. So he followed every cue. He tangled his hands in her hair, feeling the perfume there cling to him. He stroked her back and traced her chin. He eased her to the bed, eased her skirts aside, trailed his fingers up her thighs, and worshipped her with his mouth.

He was afraid of his lack of arousal, and how it betrayed his revulsion. More repellent still: having no love of her to draw on, in that moment, the only images he had to call on were those that belonged with Azareen. To draw the necessary responses from his body, he imagined her, and it felt like a betrayal to bring thoughts of her into the room with Isagol. 

But it was only another way to survive. And it worked - by the time that Isagol, shuddering, laughing, pushed him playfully on to his back and flung a leg astride his waist, he was hard enough for her to ride.

She caught his gaze and held it. He knew he dare not close his eyes, even in feigned pleasure. He could only fix his face into a kind of intensity that might pass for ardour, and let her body wring pleasure from his. She came and came again, surging upon him.

"There, there," she murmured, soothing, wicked, as he slipped out of her, "you can show me how you feel again," and he realised that there had been no inattention: the only deception had been hers.

A moment later, admiration flooded in, and he praised her for her cleverness; then she grew tired of the flattery and withdrew it, letting him see that that had been her doing too.

*

When she was sure of her pregnancy, he thought she would be done with him. By then, he'd seen the nursery. He understood that there was some principle at work that went beyond cruelty or pleasure.

He would be free, and he would not know his child. The thought hurt, with an aching complexity that marked the pain as at least partly his own. He might go back to Amezrou and rebuild his life - he knew it could be done, because it had to be, and because so many other men and women of their city had done it - but he would leave something here that would always call to him. Part of his destiny incomplete; a might-have been that would echo through every present.

But Isagol summoned him, again and again. And now, among her games, she would sometimes choose to summon up no love for _herself_.

Instead, she reached into him and magnified his longing for his child. Her, he hated with an untainted hatred, but she made him fuck her out of a stunned awe of what they had created between them. She compelled him to be tender with her because of whose vessel she was. She made him beseech her, with his body as argument, to keep him in the citadel to see his child draw breath.

(She made him wonder, in the bloody nursery, if he ever could have cared for his daughter, or if even that instinct had been planted in him. She made him wonder if he'd fought _her_ influence to commit this deed - or his own.)

*

When he first saw Isagol, he felt her power as a fascination. Not a joy like falling in love, not a daze of wonder, but a tug, an itch, an alignment. He could despise her. He could imagine harming her. But he wanted not to more than he wanted to. 

She let him feel it working on him. She let him resist it. She let him look away from her. In a mockery of respect, she did not touch him. When arousal flared in him, she smiled quietly, but did not comment. Until, some weeks after he had been taken, she called him to her chamber.

"You are here to serve me," she said. Gently, as though he only needed it explained to him. Eril-Fane looked her full in the face.

"Not in that way." His love for Azareen burned bright in him. She had done nothing to that.

"No? We do not keep those here we have no use for."

And, to his horror... that moved him. He had thought he was resisting her, because even though he desired her, he despised her. He did not seek her out. He did not return her smiles. He could not imagine begging her for her regard. Until now. At the thought of being removed from her presence, his hearts stuttered.

She did not force him. She dismissed him, and let him dwell on it - dwelling inside the fear of being apart from her.

He lied to himself: if he were set free, another victim would be chosen, and so he must stay out of duty. He knew it was a lie.

A few days later, she coaxed a kiss from him. Then she stood in front of him, naked, and made him look at her. Each night, she broke down a part of his resolve. She did it at leisure, at her own pace, as she did all things, and always with his freedom dangled in front of him.

As a threat.

When they coupled at last, the relief of giving in was so great as to make him moan at her touch. She alone knew how much he'd wanted this; she alone knew how much it sickened him, and her witnessing was - almost - a gift. She rode him slowly, her face glowing with his reflected, desperate pleasure. As his body cooled from the exertion, he shook in her arms. She cradled him, stroking his face as though wiping away tears. He did not cry. But when she left the room, he rose onto his elbows to watch her go.

*

In three years, there were times even hate cooled. 

It was so easy, after all, to hate himself more than her. For letting himself be used. For serving. For losing at every one of her games.

She had Skathis bring her a new victim, and rage and shame flared anew. He was not even a good enough toy. He was not even tortured in someone else's stead. She gave him little occupation while she enjoyed her new lover, merely letting him observe and brood. And then, pregnant again, she sent the boy to Letha and let him go. 

She brought Eril-Fane to her chamber, and the sheets in the bed in the alcove still stank with fear-sweat. Her hands were clasped lightly over her stomach and its beautiful swell. She was glorious in this state, as she had been before.

But if she had hoped to kindle jealousy, she failed. Even Eril-Fane's shame felt dull, like a blunt knife hung on a string and swung against him by a clumsy wind - not by intent.

It wouldn't do. As he looked at her he felt something new: he felt his own rage rise.

No truer for having originated within him.

Even his _hate_ was so lacking that she must kindle it herself.

If she resented having to amplify both his hate and his love, she still got pleasure from it. He ate her out with a jaw that ached - from clenching - before he even began his ministrations. He still regarded her with a stony sneer; his pose in sleep was still a desperate outflinging of limbs, as if he dreamed supplications to a god above gods.

And he knew she enjoyed his confusion, from then on: that he did not even know if his hate was all his own.

He was not to know for certain until the day he killed her. But he did know, then.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear my recipient, thank you for asking for this pairing - it's so perfect for this exchange and I had fun writing it. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
